


Compass

by philomel



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-13
Updated: 2011-11-13
Packaged: 2017-10-26 00:45:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philomel/pseuds/philomel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What limit the sky?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Compass

Mal supposed most people deemed him incapable of thinking long range. They were wrong. He thought about the future all the time — well, often enough. It’s just he didn’t see anything there. Nothing at all. Deep space offered a better vista. So he just kept on keeping on. Continuing was a kind of ambition all its own.

Or, what? Get married, have kids, settle down in that homestead kind of way? Hell, there wasn’t much point in doing that, if you didn’t have to. No matter how many planets they terraformed, there would always be too many people.

Still, as he stared out the window of the bridge, he felt pretty much alone. Sometimes he couldn’t look at that view, no matter how much he loved it, loved space, loved this freedom. It freed a person so much it suffocated him. So he had to turn back, get away from the helm, away from the windows and forget that void on occasion. No matter how many times he cut across the same swath of black, he needed a more familiar view.

* * *

 _Go in. Inward is the optimal direction for security. We want wombs, not coffins; conception, not conclusion. Go in. In. Go in, in, inininin._

River traced the insides of her mouth with her fingers. With her neck stretched far back, she scanned the ceiling while her hand scanned the roof of her mouth. Then she stopped, exhaled a little “ha” of air. Like an instrument being tucked away, she bent her elbows and folded her arms behind her back, flopping backward onto her bed. Her feet curled toward the wall over her pillow and flattened like they were landing, her legs straight and precise as she lay in a perfect 45 degree angle.

The door slid gently open behind her, but she did not move. Book’s head appeared in the crack.

“Just—”

River’s head swiveled swiftly and she looked at him upside down, eyes their usual wide, her lips ticking: one second a smile then a smirk then a grimace and back.

“Thought I’d say goodnight,” Book finished. “And give you this.” He held up a small, battered paper book. River’s arm swung out from beneath her and she held her hand out, reaching toward him. “They’re, uh, crosswords. Thought you might like a good puzzle.”

River’s hand retreated, kneaded the bedspread. “No crosses. Crosses kill language. You have to look in the words. _In_ the words. Don’t cross them, no. They are pure.” Her eyelids fluttered shut. She smiled, her hand pivoting on her wrist. “Pure.” She opened her eyes, staring at him upside down again. “I have puzzles, labyrinths.” She smiled. So Book smiled.

“Am I one of your puzzles, River?”

She just smiled.

“Okay,” he said lightly, though his smile faltered. “If you change your mind....” He flicked the pages of the book like a pack of playing cards, then laid it on the floor in front of him and closed the door behind it. “Goodnight,” he said as it clicked shut. She didn’t answer him, though sometimes she would.

* * *

Book glanced toward Simon’s room on the way to his own. In his hand he held another gift: a small box of strawberries he’d procured on their latest landing. He was saving them for Kaylee, looking forward to that bright joy that would illuminate her face. She had a way of appreciating things that made it worth whatever effort it took to get them.

He looked back down the hall toward the sudden sound of laughter. Hers: light and unrestrained, muted only by the door that separated them in this small space. Well then. He’d give her the strawberries at breakfast, hopefully before Jayne got there and tried to steal them from her. Not that he would necessarily. But Book still remembered the time Jayne had stuffed all the fresh tomatoes into his mouth all at once, just to see if he could. Trouble is, those were everyone’s tomatoes, not just his.

These, however, these were for Kaylee. Although he’d never married, Book wasn’t opposed to the idea of figurative grandchildren, and she was the closest he’d gotten to such a thing.

* * *

She counted the footsteps before opening the door. People were predictable. Most of the time. The law of probability provided a rough outline through which she could maneuver, but all probabilities had to be met with the possibility of disruption. Book needed thirteen steps to get to his room, which he usually took. So she counted four additional beats to factor in the occurrence of anomalies: his stride shortening after a particularly long day, for instance.

Simon never shortened his stride. She believed he knew what she was up to, with the counting, did it to humor her. He didn’t know it consciously of course; he wasn’t quite that clever. But he’d spent so much time on autopilot, going in one direction, toward her. She could feel his undercurrent of wanting — that primal part of him that had been buried in his pursuit of her, his obsession with saving her.

She would save herself, if she knew how.

River turned the corner, looking back toward their rooms, twisting her spine like she was wringing a cloth. She set her gaze on Simon’s room. There was no reason to alarm him to the fact that she wasn’t actually sleeping anymore. Let him have that temporary release. She heard his deep breaths from here, though anyone else would have only heard the droning song of the ship. Sometimes River harmonized with her when she was out of range of the sleeping quarters, sure no one would be woken. She didn’t suspect anyone would notice. But Wash knew the ship, and Mal knew her better; one had to expect the extraordinary even in the most ordinary situation. In such a way, almost anything could be anticipated. And when it couldn’t she would absorb that too, learn it and adapt it to her expectations.

“If the maze changes itself, I will change too,” she muttered. “Then the maze won’t catch me first.”

She liked to think she took over the ship at night, guided her when others weren’t watching. Serenity enjoyed the company, she reasoned. The dim light attenuated her body until she slipped inside the ship’s walls, slithered into her crevices like a silent sentry. What she saw here, no one else could. The ship stretched out, limitless, imposing; one could navigate her expanse and never know her. Never truly.

Passing the kitchen, River saw a new part of Serenity. Scraps and sharpness, just things, but new things. She mapped the discovery, walking backwards from it to the hull of the ship, where she clung, caressing the walls with her knuckles.

In the shadows, she hummed along, in unison.

* * *

The ship darkened in his wake. Mal figured he couldn’t sleep with his brain thinking so much about the future, about nothing — or, rather, space. So, he walked the ship, followed Serenity’s circuit, turning off the lights a little slower than usual. He’d just said goodnight to Zoe and Wash, who’d scrambled down to their quarters with all the hurry he didn’t have.

“I am a vessel,” Wash’d said with a sleepy smile. “She’s playing the pilot tonight.”

“And every night, honey.” Zoe’d poked him in the calf, hovering on the ladder steps below him.

“Oh, but not that one time....”

When their voices had dissolved with them, Mal figured it was just him and the ship. He didn’t quite believe anybody was meant for anybody. But at least he knew some _things_ were meant to be. She was the one.

Serenity’s darkness felt comforting, full contrasted with the emptiness of space.

But neither of those was true. Even now, he felt loneliness creep up on him, no matter how hard he shook it off.

He passed by the dining table. A knife and a fruit peel marked where Jayne had been: he could tell by the crude chunks of skin left behind, the lack of a dish. Also, the knife was Jayne’s.

The kitchen’s yellow paint looked muddy in the low light, suddenly sullen where it had been cheerful hours earlier. Usually it was peaceful, but you could never trust the dark. You couldn’t trust the daylight either, but you could at least see things for what they were. And when that failed, at least you could see better. Things seemed to move in the dark, under the radar, out of range. It was all right, he guessed, so long as they moved the right way, let him go on his.

As he passed through the room, he tilted his face toward the windows overhead. Big black nothing confettied with little shiny somethings, as far as the eye could see.

Mal walked through the corridors, feeling the thrum of the ship purr against the soles of his feet. Coming upon the guests’ sleeping quarters, he tensed up, feeling a familiar agitation. Always adept at stirring up his own trouble, Mal had been introduced to a whole new level of tribulations since River had come on board. Simon remained a handy commodity, but handy most of all due — in no small amount — to problems River had caused. Still, he thought maybe he could like the girl, sometimes. She was especially agreeable when she slept. But then, that was a universal truth.

Expecting to be met with overly round, nocturnal eyes, but doing so anyway, he moused toward River’s room, hand reaching out gingerly to the door. But it was already open. Inside, he could see the barely rumpled sheets and blankets of her unoccupied bed. Mal slumped against the frame, muttering some choice Mandarin and knocking the bridge of his nose into the wall. He would have to talk to Simon. Again.

Simon. Maybe she had gone there. “Oh please,” Mal grumbled. “Don’t be loose on my ship.” He squinted his eyes shut as far as he could and still see, crept to Simon’s room, flattened his palm against the door and eased it open.

River was not here either. Though Simon was, of course. But he was also awake. His eyes were closed, yet he sat upright, breathing shallowly as if he’d just woken from a bad dream. Mal raised his hand, curling it into a fist, ready to knock and announce his presence — a predicament which he realized would appear and was indeed a bit backward, but something caught his attention and made him no longer worry about appearances. That is, his own.

On the bed, Simon sat still as can be, perfectly normal to the point of abnormal with such perfect posture. Perfectly normal, were it not for the low keening of his voice, suggestive movements in the dark. Mal thought of Kaylee, felt his anger flare, tightening at the corners of his face. She was like a daughter to him; he wouldn’t see her corrupted (never minding how they’d met; things was different now). But then he saw it: the steady progression of Simon’s hand between his legs.

Just Simon. His motions were slow, methodical. But then he gave a lurching pull that seemed to jar his whole body. The tendons in his neck stood out, so when he shook they looked like struck wire.

Mal froze, hand sweating against the door, eyes squeezed tight, wondering if he could go back the way he had come and get himself out of this. It wasn’t catching Simon in the act that unnerved Mal, it was the aloneness of it all. When Simon began to speed up, suddenly panting and erratic, Mal started out of his paralysis and pushed the door shut, managing to do so with the barest squeak. He crept backward, holding his breath, wishing the door to stay closed.

“Spying, are we?”

Mal jumped, biting his tongue. He turned and faced Inara, wincing. “I nne— oww.” His hand shot to his mouth reflexively.

Inara smiled tightly, her eyes darker than usual under the hard, accusing blink of her jeweled lashes. “Petty thievery no longer fulfilling?”

He glared. Then he pointed to River’s room.

“Oh, her too? So you’re intrusive, but _fair_ with your spying then.”

He pointed again. “ _That’s_ empty. I was lookin’ for her.” He pointed toward Simon’s room. “So if we’ve finished with our little joke, I need to go find our little crazy person.”

Inara’s brow furrowed. She peered into the empty room then looked back at Mal. “Let me help.” She arched her eyebrow and nodded as Mal shook his head. “Besides, when we find her, she might require someone more — shall we say — tender in demeanor to coax her out of her hiding place. She is a fragile girl, Mal. And to say you are indelicate is akin to saying—”

“You’re a _companion_?”

Inara clenched her jaw.

“Ain’t interested in analogies,” Mal continued curtly. “Interested in finding where that girl’s run off to, before she starts poking buttons ‘cause they’re shiny and mathematical or whatever. Don’t suppose you’d be much help, this not being _your_ ship. But, fine. Come, if you must.” Mal stalked past her, back down the hall.

“Shouldn’t we wake Simon up?” Inara scurried to catch up with him.

“Oh, I’d say he’s up— Nevermind.”

Mal scanned the ship’s walls all around him as they walked. Serenity had a simplicity to her, and most people assumed little of her. He reckoned that a device of deception, especially when you knew all the nooks and crannies, even the old ones that had been converted. But some folks never bothered to find those hiding places, just as they never bothered to see Serenity as she was: free. She could go anywhere.

But there was a finite number of places to be _on_ her, and Mal felt determined to find the one place River might have chosen. Inara searched quietly with him, matching his strides. They reached the bridge and, finding it just as River-less, doubled back, trading positions and covering the other’s path.

When they entered the engine room, Mal kept walking toward the back but Inara stopped by the doorway. He looked around at her, saw her smiling. In Kaylee’s striped hammock, River slept, swinging. Her limbs fell out at all angles, unfurled like a cat. Precarious or not, she seemed at peace.

Here, where the ship sang the loudest, River had succumbed to Serenity’s lullaby.

Inara wanted to leave her there. Mal objected, said she could wake up and still cause damage. He sat down in a corner where he could keep a close watch on River and told Inara to go. She sighed. Her most exasperating responses were her sighs, but Mal smiled — a quarter smile at best, his face heavy with exhaustion and delayed sleep. Inara’s sigh became a yawn, and she sat down beside him, her robes falling half over his legs. The floor was hard and too warm from the engine, but in such cramped space they had nowhere to move but closer to each other. Drowsy and drowsier still, they watched the girl swaying in her bunk, swaying to the time of Serenity.

By morning, River was back in her room. They needn’t have worried.

Without Kaylee’s permission, River would never alter the course. But she knew she had turned the ship around.

**Author's Note:**

> Beta: themoononastick.


End file.
